All seven of our area football teams learned who they will be facing in district play for the next two seasons. The districts have been pared down from 8 teams to 6 teams for the upcoming seasons for all of our local teams except 8-man football, which leads to 4 non-district games with 5 district games. 8-man squads will have 8 team districts and 2 non-district games.

For class 3A, the defending runner-ups Pella will once again be matched in the same district with Marion County rival Knoxville, who will be joined by former class 4A school Newton, Grinnell, Oskaloosa, and South Tama.

PCM is once again the lone class 2A area school, and won’t see too many new faces from their previous district as Centerville, Chariton, Clarke will be joined by Saydel and recently moved up from class 1A Des Moines Christian.

Pella Christian and Pleasantville will also continue to see familiar faces, as they are matched up in the district for the second straight cycle, and will be joined alongside opponents from last year’s district Interstate-35, Woodward-Granger, and Woodward Academy, as well as former class A school Colfax-Mingo.

For our 8-man schools Twin Cedars and Melcher-Dallas, the Sabers and Saints will continue to see the Marion County 8-man championship played as district opponents, joined by AGWSR, Baxter, Collins-Maxwell, Colo-Nesco, Meskwaki Settlement, and former class A powerhouse Gladbrook-Reinbeck.

Full schedules for all area teams, including the non-district opponents, will be released by the Iowa High School Athletic Association later this year, and as soon as they are available, they can be found on KNIAKRLS.com.

The new postseason qualifying system goes as follows, per the IAHSAA

Postseason Qualifying System
A provisional recommendation approved by the Board changes how the 16 teams in each class will qualify for their playoffs starting in 2018.

The new format for 2018-19 is as follows…

1. Only the district champion or teams tying for a district championship receive automatic qualification.
2. For the first time since the debut of district football, all nine games will count toward postseason qualification.
3. The 17-point district tiebreaker will be eliminated and not factor into qualification.
4. Remaining at-large qualifiers will be determined by a Ratings Percentage Index formula. The RPI will use three criteria to determine postseason qualification.
a. Team’s overall win-loss percentage (accounting for 37.5% of the index)
b. Team’s opponent’s win-loss percentage (37.5%)
c. Team’s opponent’s opponent’s win-loss percentage (25%)
5. Classification differences between non-district opponents do not affect RPI. The NCAA uses RPI in several men’s and women’s sports. The Colorado High School Activities Association debuted a similar RPI system in 2016.